From the course: Portrait Photography: Ten Styles with One Light

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Silhouette

Silhouette

- This kind of a picture is really simple to do and many photographers overlook it, but I think you should make a silhouette every time you shoot. It's super simple to do. All you have to do is position your subject in front of the light. In this case, we simply shined our flash through the diffuser and positioned Hillary in front of it, so that we just see her silhouette. This kind of a thing is really cool and it can be very elegant. Try to make sure when you make a silhouette that it's a clean silhouette. You don't want to have a lock of hair coming down and kind of merging with the nose, or coming out of the nose in the silhouette. It looks like spaghetti coming out of her nose. That's something to watch out for. Make sure that the chin and the lines around the face are all clean of distractions. Whenever I photograph a silhouette like this, it reminds me of those Victorian portraits that people made, a silhouette casting a shadow on the wall, and then drawing a picture that way…

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